


Sorting Socks

by GraceEliz



Series: Assorted Poems [5]
Category: Poetry - Fandom
Genre: Laundry, Poetry, The satisfaction of finally sorting socks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 22:08:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17816411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: A poem I wrote whilst doing what the poem talks about.





	Sorting Socks

In my house, the laundry lives upstairs.  
The airer hangs over the stairs, crammed full  
White shirts and dark skirts  
There are two baskets needing emptied  
So I pull the shirts away,  
The plastic sock-hangers banging against the wooden bannister  
Like a ship’s rigging  
Hauled about.

The dry washing piles up on the armchair at the top of the stairs,  
Abandoned-looking and tangled.  
Socks next, paired up, and underwear thrown on top.  
First to be hung up is darks,  
Trousers and socks mostly.  
Next is blues, jackets and shirts, but there is not enough space and half a basket must wait.  
Socks then. They are satisfying,  
Sat on the wooden floor to hang them up on the racks which like this are eye-level.  
When this is done I move on.

The unit outside the bathroom holds blankets,  
But it’s surface is a wasteland of unclaimed underwear and single socks.  
I’m not sure how to start.

I fetch a basket – empty – to fill with underwear  
Knickers and boxers  
Then paired socks – mated, the word.  
What is left seems a warzone.  
Black and red, blue, a few orange and purple and green.  
Chaos broken by technicolour wounds.  
By colour, then.

Some become clear, paired and basketed,  
Some I take to hang with their mates over the stairs.  
What I am left with after half an hour of this laundering  
Is a parade line, or a hospital ward maybe, of single socks  
Mismatched pinks and blues.  
Pink’s the worst – too many tones too close but not close enough.  
I gather them up, pinks-purples-stripes-anklesocks, and bunch them up.  
A parade line.  
The basket I leave alone for others to sort through.


End file.
